The White Tiger As a Reflection of India

Indian writing in English is a magnificent approach of modern Indian Culture. Compared to vernacular literature, Indian Writing in English has a ample range of incarnated Indian culture and the soul of Indianness across the globe. Indian Authors like Kiran Desai, Salman Rushdie, Raja Rao, Arundhati Roy, Mulkraj Anand, R. K. Narayan are among the prolific Indian authors who have contributed in enriching the Indian English Literature. Many of them also have won reputable literary prizes for their artistic creation. Their work portrays the Indianness under the changing values of modernity. In the present scenario, Arvind Adiga has materialized his thought via arrived his debut novel The White Tiger which won the Man Booker Prize in 2008. While the Indian English literature has a splendid and elegant history, Arvind Adiga has produced a modern insight into the psychology of Modern India. Many of his novels and articles are based on his own observation of the Indian life.

Arvind Adiga is one of the best contemporary writers of Indian English Literature. He was born on October 23, 1974, in Chennai, India, the son of Dr.K. Madhava and Usha Adiga. He was raised in the southern coastal city of Mangalore, where he had his initial schooling. He also read a lot for his own enjoyment, especially English twentieth-century authors such as G.K.Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, J.B.Priestley, and Somerset Maugham. When he was nearly sixteen, the family emigrated to Sydney, Australia, Where he attended James Ruse Agricultural High School. An Outstanding student, Adiga went on to enroll at Columbia University in New York, from which he graduated with a degree in English Literature in 1997. After that he studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, England.

Adiga began his career as a financial journalist, taking an internship at the Financial Times, where he published articles on topics such as the stock market and interviews of well-known people in the financial world. He also wrote literary reviews. From 2003 to 2005, he was South Asia correspondent for Time magazine. Then he left to purse a freelance writing career. He wrote a first draft of The White Tiger in2005, but in December of the following year, he began to rewrite it entirely. The novel was published in 2008 and won the Man Booker Prize, one of the literary world’s major awards, that year. He donated a portion of the prize money to St.Aloysius college in Mangalore, where he had once been a student. The money was to be used to provide scholarships for the underprivileged.

Adiga’s second book was Between the Assassinations, a collection of interlinked short stories Set in the fictional Indian town of kittur over the period 1984 to 1991. The book was published in England in 2008 and in the United States in 2009. Another novel, Last Man in Tower, set in Mumbai, India, was published in 2011. Five years later, in 2016, Adiga published his third novel, Selection Day. Also set in Mumbai, it follows the fortunes of two brothers who grow up in a slum but who excel at cricket.

India is emerging as an eminent power in the developed world. All are speaking about whirlwind progress of Indian economy, science, and technology, its democratic political system, its social and cultural heritage. The Luminesce and charm of the nation shines on the world map. But behind this dazzling glow there are still billions of people who are impoverished from their basic necessities of Existence. They are leading a life of stark penury, who are illiterate and manipulated and enslaved like animals leading a life of bondage, who are victimized on the basis of class and caste. They have a different world entirely and they are ambitious to rise in their life and have a passion to be considered at least like human beings. Aravind Adiga is a clear observant of life around him, its social evils, corruption and growing difference between the rich and poor.